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  3. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare

In recent years the field of modern history has been enriched by the exploration of two parallel histories. These are the social and cultural history of armed conflict, and the impact of military events on social and cultural history.Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare presents the fruits of this growing area of research, reflecting both the colonization of military history by cultural historians and the reciprocal interest of military historians in social and cultural history, to the benefit of both. The series offers the latest scholarship in European and non-European events from the 1850s to the present day.

  • General Editors: Robert Gerwarth, University College Dublin, Jay Winter, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Advisory Editors: Heather Jones, University College London, Rana Mitter, University of Oxford, Michelle Moyd, Michigan State University, Martin Thomas, University of Exeter

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67 results in Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare

Page 2 of 4

Irish Women and the Great War
  • Fionnuala Walsh
  • Published online:
    15 July 2020
    Print publication:
    16 July 2020
  • This is the first book-length study of the impact of the Great War on women's everyday lives in Ireland, focussing on the years of the war and its immediate aftermath. Fionnuala Walsh demonstrates how Irish women threw themselves into the war effort, mobilising in various different forms, such as nursing wounded soldiers, preparing hospital supplies and parcels of comforts, undertaking auxiliary military roles in port areas or behind the lines, and producing weapons of war. However, the war's impact was also felt beyond direct mobilisation, affecting women's household management, family relations, standard of living, and work conditions and opportunities. Drawing on extensive research in archives in Ireland and Britain, Walsh brings women's wartime experience out of the historical shadow and examines welfare and domestic life, bereavement, social morality, employment, war service, politicisation, and demobilisation to challenge ideas of emancipation and reflect upon the significant impact of the Great War on Irish society.

The Hunger Winter
  • Fighting Famine in the Occupied Netherlands, 1944–1945
  • Ingrid de Zwarte
  • Published online:
    04 July 2020
    Print publication:
    23 July 2020
  • In this pioneering study, Ingrid de Zwarte examines the causes and demographic impact of the Dutch 'Hunger Winter' that occurred in the Netherlands during the final months of German occupation in the Second World War. She offers a comprehensive and multifaceted view of the socio-political context in which the famine emerged and considers how the famine was confronted at different societal levels, including the responses by Dutch, German and Allied state institutions, affected households, and local communities. Contrary to highly-politicized assumptions, she argues that the famine resulted from a culmination of multiple transportation and distribution difficulties. Although Allied relief was postponed for many crucial months and official rations fell far below subsistence level, successful community efforts to fight the famine conditions emerged throughout the country. She also explains why German authorities found reasons to cooperate and allow relief for the starving Dutch. With these explorations, The Hunger Winter offers a radically new understanding of the Dutch famine and provides a valuable insight into the strategies and coping mechanisms of a modern society facing catastrophe.

After the Korean War
  • An Intimate History
  • Heonik Kwon
  • Published online:
    21 March 2020
    Print publication:
    16 April 2020
  • Following his prizewinning studies of the Vietnam War, renowned anthropologist Heonik Kwon presents this ground-breaking study of the Korean War's enduring legacies seen through the realm of intimate human experience. Kwon boldly reclaims kinship as a vital category in historical and political enquiry and probes the grey zone between the modern and the traditional (and between the civil and the social) in the lived reality of Korea's civil war and the Cold War more broadly. With captivating historical detail and innovative conceptual frames, Kwon's moving, creative analysis provides fresh insights into the Korean conflict, civil war and reconciliation, history and memory and critical political theory.

Sounds of War
  • Music in the British Armed Forces during the Great War
  • Emma Hanna
  • Published online:
    20 February 2020
    Print publication:
    05 March 2020
  • Comparatively little is known about the musical cultures of the British armed forces during the Great War. This groundbreaking study is the first to examine music's vital presence in a range of military contexts including military camps, ships, aerodromes and battlefields, canteen huts, hospitals and PoW camps. Emma Hanna argues that music was omnipresent in servicemen's wartime existence and was a vital element for the maintenance of morale. She shows how music was utilised to stimulate recruitment and fundraising, for diplomatic and propaganda purposes, and for religious, educational and therapeutic reasons. Music was not in any way ephemeral, it was unmatched in its power to cajole, console, cheer and inspire during the conflict and its aftermath. This study is a major contribution to our understanding of the wartime realities of the British armed forces during the Great War.

The Other Wars
  • The Experience and Memory of the First World War in the Middle East and Macedonia
  • Justin Fantauzzo
  • Published online:
    28 November 2019
    Print publication:
    12 December 2019
  • In this insightful and revealing study, Justin Fantauzzo uses a wide range of documentary and visual sources to explore the experience and memory of British and Dominion soldiers who fought in the Middle East and Macedonia during the First World War. He shows that not only was the experience of these campaigns markedly different to their counter-parts on the Western Front, but so too were the memories and portrayals of these campaigns in the inter-war period. Fantauzzo's analysis highlights the disparities and contradictions that exist in the experience and memory of war and helps us to rethink what the war meant to the soldiers who fought in this region, how soldiers understood the war itself and how it was remembered.

Designing Memory
  • The Architecture of Commemoration in Europe, 1914 to the Present
  • Sabina Tanović
  • Published online:
    08 November 2019
    Print publication:
    28 November 2019
  • This innovative study of memorial architecture investigates how design can translate memories of human loss into tangible structures, creating spaces for remembering. Using approaches from history, psychology, anthropology and sociology, Sabina Tanović explores purposes behind creating contemporary memorials in a given location, their translation into architectural concepts, their materialisation in the face of social and political challenges, and their influence on the transmission of memory. Covering the period from the First World War to the present, she looks at memorials such as the Holocaust museums in Mechelen and Drancy, as well as memorials for the victims of terrorist attacks, to unravel the private and public role of memorial architecture and the possibilities of architecture as a form of agency in remembering and dealing with a difficult past. The result is a distinctive contribution to the literature on history and memory, and on architecture as a link to the past.

The Veterans' Tale
  • British Military Memoirs of the Second World War
  • Frances Houghton
  • Published online:
    28 December 2018
    Print publication:
    10 January 2019
  • This is a unique account of the ways in which British veterans of the Second World War remembered, understood, and recounted their experiences of battle throughout the post-war period. Focusing on themes of landscape, weaponry, the enemy, and comradeship, Frances Houghton examines the imagery and language used by war memoirists to reconstruct and review both their experiences of battle and their sense of wartime self. Houghton also identifies how veterans' memoirs became significant sites of contest as former servicemen sought to challenge what they saw as unsatisfactory official, scholarly, and cultural representations of the Second World War in Britain. Her findings show that these memoirs are equally important both for the new light they shed on the memory and meanings of wartime military experience among British veterans, and for what they tell us about the cultural identity of military life-writing in post-war British society.

Bombing the City
  • Civilian Accounts of the Air War in Britain and Japan, 1939–1945
  • Aaron William Moore
  • Published online:
    01 October 2018
    Print publication:
    18 October 2018
  • World War II is enshrined in our collective memory as the good war - a victory of good over evil. However, the bombing war has always troubled this narrative as total war transformed civilians into legitimate targets and raised unsettling questions such as whether it was possible for Allies and Axis alike to be victims of aggression. In Bombing the City, an unprecedented comparative history of how ordinary Britons and Japanese experienced bombing, Aaron William Moore offers a major new contribution to these debates. Utilising hundreds of diaries, letters, and memoirs, he recovers the voices of ordinary people on both sides - from builders, doctors and factory-workers to housewives, students and policemen - and reveals the shared experiences shaped by gender, class, race, and age. He reveals how it was that the British and Japanese public continued to support bombing elsewhere even as they experienced firsthand its terrible impact at home.

German Soldiers and the Occupation of France, 1940–1944
  • Julia S. Torrie
  • Published online:
    24 September 2018
    Print publication:
    11 October 2018
  • From 1940 to 1944, German soldiers not only fought in and ruled over France, but also lived their lives there. While the combat experiences of German soldiers are relatively well-documented, as are the everyday lives of the occupied French population, we know much less about occupiers' daily activities beyond combat, especially when it comes to men who were not top-level administrators. Using letters, photographs, and tour guides, alongside official sources, Julia S. Torrie reveals how ground-level occupiers understood their role, and how their needs and desires shaped policy and practices. At the same time as soldiers were told to dominate and control France, they were also encouraged to sight-see, to photograph and to 'consume' the country, leading to a familiarity that limited violence rather than inciting it. The lives of these ordinary soldiers offer new insights into the occupation of France, the history of Nazism and the Second World War.

Morale and Discipline in the Royal Navy during the First World War
  • Laura Rowe
  • Published online:
    17 August 2018
    Print publication:
    30 August 2018
  • In contrast to the voluminous literature on trench warfare, few scholarly works have been written on how the First World War was experienced at sea. The conditions of war challenged the Royal Navy's position within British national identity and its own service ethos. This challenge took the form of a dialogue, fuelled by fear of civil unrest, between the discourses of paternalism from above and democratism from below. Laura Rowe explores issues of morale and discipline, using the contemporary language of discipline to shed light on key questions of how the service was able to absorb indiscipline with marked success through a subtle web of loyalties, history, ethos, traditions and customs, which were rooted in older notions of service but moulded by the new conditions of total war. In so doing, she provides not only a new methodological framework for understanding morale, but also military discipline and leadership.

Women as Veterans in Britain and France after the First World War
  • Alison S. Fell
  • Published online:
    23 June 2018
    Print publication:
    12 July 2018
  • This is the story of how women in France and Britain between 1915 and 1933 appropriated the cultural identity of female war veteran in order to have greater access to public life and a voice in a political climate in which women were rarely heard on the public stage. The 'veterans' covered by this history include former nurses, charity workers, secret service agents and members of resistance networks in occupied territory, as well as members of the British auxiliary corps. What unites these women is how they attempted to present themselves as 'female veterans' in order to gain social advantages and give themselves the right to speak about the war and its legacies. Alison S. Fell also considers the limits of the identity of war veteran for women, considering as an example the wartime and post-war experiences of the female industrial workers who led episodes of industrial action.

Captives of War
  • British Prisoners of War in Europe in the Second World War
  • Clare Makepeace
  • Published online:
    25 October 2017
    Print publication:
    12 October 2017
  • This is a pioneering history of the experience of captivity of British prisoners of war (POWs) in Europe during the Second World War, focussing on how they coped and came to terms with wartime imprisonment. Clare Makepeace reveals the ways in which POWs psychologically responded to surrender, the camaraderie and individualism that dominated life in the camps, and how, in their imagination, they constantly breached the barbed wire perimeter to be with their loved ones at home. Through the diaries, letters and log books written by seventy-five POWs, along with psychiatric research and reports, she explores the mental strains that tore through POWs' minds and the challenges that they faced upon homecoming. The book tells the story of wartime imprisonment through the love, fears, fantasies, loneliness, frustration and guilt that these men felt, shedding new light on what the experience of captivity meant for these men both during the war and after their liberation.

Exhibiting War
  • The Great War, Museums, and Memory in Britain, Canada, and Australia
  • Jennifer Wellington
  • Published online:
    29 September 2017
    Print publication:
    21 September 2017
  • What does it mean to display war? Examining a range of different exhibitions in Britain, Canada and Australia, Jennifer Wellington reveals complex imperial dynamics in the ways these countries developed diverging understandings of the First World War, despite their cultural, political and institutional similarities. While in Britain a popular narrative developed of the conflict as a tragic rupture with the past, Australia and Canada came to see it as engendering national birth through violence. Narratives of the war's meaning were deliberately constructed by individuals and groups pursuing specific agendas: to win the war and immortalise it at the same time. Drawing on a range of documentary and visual material, this book analyses how narratives of mass violence changed over time. Emphasising the contingent development of national and imperial war museums, it illuminates the way they acted as spaces in which official, academic and popular representations of this violent past intersect.

Colonial Captivity during the First World War
  • Internment and the Fall of the German Empire, 1914–1919
  • Mahon Murphy
  • Published online:
    05 September 2017
    Print publication:
    07 September 2017
  • With the outbreak of war in 1914, an estimated 30,000 German civilians in African and Asian colonies were violently uprooted and imprisoned. Britain's First World War internment of German settlers seriously challenged the structures that underpinned nineteenth-century imperialism. Through its analysis of this internment, this book highlights the impact that the First World War had on the notion of a common European 'civilising mission' and the image of empire in the early twentieth century. Mahon Murphy examines the effect of the war on a collective European colonial identity, perceptions of internment in the extra-European theatres of war, and empires in transition during war. Policymakers were forced to address difficult questions about the future rule of Germany's colonies and the nature of empire in general. Far from a conflict restricted to European powers, the First World War triggered a worldwide remaking of ideas, institutions and geopolitics.

British Prisoners of War in First World War Germany
  • Oliver Wilkinson
  • Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    27 April 2017
  • Over 185,000 British military servicemen were captured by the Germans during the First World War and incarcerated as prisoners of war (POWs). In this original investigation into their experiences of captivity, Wilkinson uses official and private British source material to explore how these servicemen were challenged by, and responded to, their wartime fate. Examining the psychological anguish associated with captivity, and physical trials, such as the controlling camp spaces; harsh routines and regimes; the lack of material necessities; and, for many, forced labour demands, he asks if, how and with what effects British POWs were able to respond to such challenges. The culmination of this research reveals a range of coping strategies embracing resistance; leadership and organisation; networks of support; and links with 'home worlds'. British Prisoners of War in First World War Germany offers an original insight into First World War captivity, the German POW camps, and the mentalities and perceptions of the British servicemen held within.

War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe
  • Ángel Alcalde
  • Published online:
    29 June 2017
    Print publication:
    07 June 2017
  • This book explores, from a transnational viewpoint, the historical relationship between war veterans and fascism in interwar Europe. Until now, historians have been roughly divided between those who assume that 'brutalization' (George L. Mosse) led veterans to join fascist movements and those who stress that most ex-soldiers of the Great War became committed pacifists and internationalists. Transcending the debates of the brutalization thesis and drawing upon a wide range of archival and published sources, this work focuses on the interrelated processes of transnationalization and the fascist permeation of veterans' politics in interwar Europe to offer a wider perspective on the history of both fascism and veterans' movements. A combination of mythical constructs, transfers, political communication, encounters and networks within a transnational space explain the relationship between veterans and fascism. Thus, this book offers new insights into the essential ties between fascism and war, and contributes to the theorization of transnational fascism.

Shell-Shock and Medical Culture in First World War Britain
  • Tracey Loughran
  • Published online:
    23 March 2017
    Print publication:
    27 February 2017
  • Shell-Shock and Medical Culture in First World War Britain is a thought-provoking reassessment of medical responses to war-related psychological breakdown in the early twentieth century. Dr Loughran places shell-shock within the historical context of British psychological medicine to examine the intellectual resources doctors drew on as they struggled to make sense of nervous collapse. She reveals how medical approaches to shell-shock were formulated within an evolutionary framework which viewed mental breakdown as regression to a level characteristic of earlier stages of individual or racial development, but also ultimately resulted in greater understanding and acceptance of psychoanalytic approaches to human mind and behaviour. Through its demonstration of the crucial importance of concepts of mind-body relations, gender, willpower and instinct to the diagnosis of shell-shock, this book locates the disorder within a series of debates on human identity dating back to the Darwinian revolution and extending far beyond the medical sphere.

Mobilizing the Russian Nation
  • Patriotism and Citizenship in the First World War
  • Melissa Kirschke Stockdale
  • Published online:
    25 November 2016
    Print publication:
    13 December 2016
  • The First World War had a devastating impact on the Russian state, yet relatively little is known about the ways in which ordinary Russians experienced and viewed this conflict. Melissa Kirschke Stockdale presents the first comprehensive study of the Great War's influence on Russian notions of national identity and citizenship. Drawing on a vast array of sources, the book examines the patriotic and nationalist organizations which emerged during the war, the role of the Russian Orthodox Church, the press and the intelligentsia in mobilizing Russian society, the war's impact on the rights of citizens, and the new, democratized ideas of Russian nationhood which emerged both as a result of the war and of the 1917 revolution. Russia's war experience is revealed as a process that helped consolidate in the Russian population a sense of membership in a great national community, rather than being a test of patriotism which they failed.

The First World War and German National Identity
  • The Dual Alliance at War
  • Jan Vermeiren
  • Published online:
    05 July 2016
    Print publication:
    18 July 2016
  • The First World War and German National Identity is an original and carefully researched study of the coalition between Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary during the First World War. Focusing on the attitudes taken by governmental circles, politically active groups, intellectuals, and the broader public towards the German-speaking population in the Habsburg Monarchy, Jan Vermeiren explores how the war challenged established notions of German national identity and history. In this context, he also sheds new light on key issues in the military and the diplomatic relationship between Berlin and Vienna, re-examining the German war aims debate and presenting many new insights into German-Hungarian and German-Slav relations in the period. The book is a major contribution to German and Central European history and will be of great interest to scholars of the First World War and the complex relationship between war and society.

Ordinary Workers, Vichy and the Holocaust
  • French Railwaymen and the Second World War
  • Ludivine Broch
  • Published online:
    05 June 2016
    Print publication:
    07 June 2016
  • Should French railwaymen during the Second World War be viewed as great resisters or collaborators in genocide? Ludivine Broch revisits histories of resistance, collaboration and deportation in Vichy France through the prism of the French railwaymen – the cheminots. De-sanctifying the idea of railwaymen as heroic saboteurs, Broch reveals the daily life of these workers who accommodated with the Vichy regime, cohabitated with the Germans and stole from their employer. Moreover, by intertwining the history of the working classes with Holocaust history, she highlights unexpected histories under Vichy and sensitive memories of the post-war period. Ultimately, this book bursts the myths of cheminot resistance and collaboration in the Holocaust, and reveals that there is more to their story than this. The cheminots fed both the French nation and the German military apparatus, exemplifying the complexities of personal, professional and political life under occupation.

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